Milestones (Amy's diary)
- Thread starter aiminglow
- Start date
Your mention of the Australian magpie reminded me of my first "contact" with Australia decades ago: Flying Doctors. Like any long-running doctors' series they at some point had a mysterious amnesia patient. A boy who liked to paint. They figured out where to look for information on him because he painted a magpie, which apparently only occurs in a specific part of Australia?
Cate
Long term member
I love the sound of a magpie & we have been hearing them a lot lately. There are nine subspecies of magpies in Australia, with very different feather patterns. For some reason, the Tasmanian ones don't swoop us. I grew up being swooped by magpies on my walk to school in NE Victoria.
That may be cultural behavior. Assuming Tasmanian magpies are truly separated from the mainland species they´d have to come up with it independently.
Rumour has it that Tasmanian magpies are less pressured.
Tasmania - the green, the serene...
Welcome back Amy. This whole thing is bringing up a lot of mixed emotions - fear of what’s to come, appreciation of all the food, comfort and entertainment we have at home, admiration of all the wonderful doctors and nurses and government officials doing their very best for us, and sadness at the many lives lost already.
Glad you are home safe.
Glad you are home safe.
Rumour has it that Tasmanian magpies are less pressured.
Around here it´s the magpies (pica pica) doing the pressuring and breaking the peace: they´re stone-cold killers of baby birds and other small fuzzy animals. Their chattering is interesting to listen to but I wouldn´t call it a "song". So now I need to go look up Australian magpies.
alligatorob
Respected Member
I have enjoyed all the magpie talk, we also have magpies, a different species, the black-billed or American magpie. People here take chicks from the nests and raise them as pets. They can learn to talk and are quite smart birds. No song to compete with the Australian magpie though.
Corvids are amazingly intelligent - if they were mammals people would see it more, I think - or if they were more human-centred.
But here's some bird-talk of a different sort - talk about birds in a herb-forest:
Weeks ago (it seems weeks ago, anyway) I said I’d post a photo of the herb-tub to go with the pumpkin photos And so I will do, here and now, but thereby hangs a tale:
I was scrabbling up the soil in the tub, not properly preparing it, but just digging around, loosening it a bit, before dumping in the bundles of herbs, as bought at the market, so as to make it easier for delicate roots to find a way in and take in nourishment – when what should I dig up but a little ceramic stork, which had been set in cement sometime in the past, and then torn away from its fantasy-garden, and tossed into the yard… well, who knows what its story was? But there it was in front of me, seeing the light again, right where I was planning to plant the herbs!
I was totally charmed, of course! and have set it upright now, and have given it companions, three plastic cranes who dance in the forest, while the more sober stork stands watchfully, not dancing, but pondering the changes the times have brought to its life.
The herbs are chives, mint and coriander.
(I wonder how it’s going. Our neighbor might be looking after it, and might be harvesting some herbs – I hope so.)
But here's some bird-talk of a different sort - talk about birds in a herb-forest:
Weeks ago (it seems weeks ago, anyway) I said I’d post a photo of the herb-tub to go with the pumpkin photos And so I will do, here and now, but thereby hangs a tale:
I was scrabbling up the soil in the tub, not properly preparing it, but just digging around, loosening it a bit, before dumping in the bundles of herbs, as bought at the market, so as to make it easier for delicate roots to find a way in and take in nourishment – when what should I dig up but a little ceramic stork, which had been set in cement sometime in the past, and then torn away from its fantasy-garden, and tossed into the yard… well, who knows what its story was? But there it was in front of me, seeing the light again, right where I was planning to plant the herbs!
I was totally charmed, of course! and have set it upright now, and have given it companions, three plastic cranes who dance in the forest, while the more sober stork stands watchfully, not dancing, but pondering the changes the times have brought to its life.
The herbs are chives, mint and coriander.
(I wonder how it’s going. Our neighbor might be looking after it, and might be harvesting some herbs – I hope so.)
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You're right, Petal! I'll find a way to do that.
And a second view of dancing cranes:
